The town’s snow-fighting fleet is in sad shape, with several plow trucks sidelined due to extensive corrosion, engine failures and other problems, officials said.

“Public works will not be able to provide acceptable service with the existing fleet, and will provide less service as the obsolete fleet further ages,” Public Works Director Keith Chapman wrote in a recent memo.

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At its meeting on Dec. 11, the town council is to consider renting two trucks to get by this winter. Mayor Marcia Leclerc said Wednesday that she will include six new trucks in her 2019-20 budget recommendation.

While preparing vehicles for the winter, Chapman wrote in the memo to Finance Director Michael Walsh, the fleet maintenance crew “discovered a myriad of problems too drastic to repair.”

Six trucks have been taken off the road due to rust, rot, engine deterioration, electrical system failure and other safety concerns, officials said. Estimated repair costs range from $38,000 to $74,000.

“East Hartford by state definition is a distressed community,” Leclerc said, “and as such, we stretch our dollars as far as possible, especially when we talk about capital equipment.”

“But there comes a tipping point when continuing to invest in repairing aging equipment for the sake of keeping it on the road to avoid replacing it becomes more and more difficult,” she said. “East Hartford is at that point, and rather than spend funds on short term fixes, we have to find the ability to replace instead of repair.”

The average life cycle for a properly maintained snow-fighting dump truck is 12 years, Chapman wrote. The average age of the six sidelined trucks is 18 years. Replacement costs range from $200,000 for a rear-drive six-wheeler to $250,000 for a rear-drive ten-wheeler. The town’s two snow-plowing pay-loaders also have exceeded their life cycles and both require repairs that exceed their value, Chapman wrote

An interim solution is to rent two trucks from Freightliner at $2,000 each per month, with lease payments going toward eventual purchase, officials said.

The town has spent a total of $1-$1.2 million each year on lease/purchases for all types of vehicles, town council Chairman Rich Kehoe said. The problem is limited resources, not deferred maintenance, because town crews have made the vehicles last beyond their normal life cycles, Kehoe said.

“We have a ton of needs with limited resources, and on occasion we get to this kind of point where a bunch of things break down after we’ve been able to push off buying new vehicles,” he said.